Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

God could have caused much more compelling miracles that would have been believable to a much wider range of people and far more impressive. God could have made the evidence for his existence, say in the details of nature, vastly more obvious than he did. If God wanted to, he could have made his existence obvious and manifest to everyone. If God had chosen to do so, he could have left compelling evidence that life came from him, not from evolution, and that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago. If God had chosen to, he could have created the world so that humans, allegedly his chosen, favored beings in the universe, were of obvious central importance in the cosmos. If God had chosen to, he could have had Jesus appear and provide much more evidence to people who were not his fanatical followers. If God wanted to, he could have caused the Big Bang and made it obvious that he was the cause. If God wanted to, he could have made it easier for us to discover the cure for polio, or for cancer, or for bubonic plague.

If he exists, he certainly has the capacity to make his existence known. Mere humans are able to manifest themselves far more obviously. He would know how to make his existence known. He would have perfect knowledge of the most effective means of revealing himself. Even the most impressive alleged cases of God’s presence in the world are utterly trivial against the scale of what a supernatural being with God’s extraordinary powers could have brought about. In all of the questioning, exploring, pleading, and seeking that billions of people have engaged in for centuries, he has refused to respond in any unequivocal ways. In every instance where someone claims to have contact with God, we can easily think of vastly more effective and unmistakable evidence that such a powerful being could have transmitted if he had chosen to.

But instead, if we are to believe that God exists and that he is the creator of the universe, then we must accept that a loving, powerful, caring God who wants us to believe in his existence set up the entire universe to look exactly as it would if there were no God. He deliberately obscured or hid every bit of information that might have made it possible for people to come to believe in his existence in a reasonable, sensible manner. Instead he devised a set of natural laws, a course of natural events, and a process of natural selection that when taken together render need for God as an explanation completely pointless.

God, if he exists, is hiding so effectively that the world looks just as we would expect it to if there were no God; it doesn’t have any of the features we would expect to find if there were a God. All of our attempts to confirm his existence have come up empty handed. God is hiding so effectively that even by their own admission, the vast majority of believers admit that in order to believe they must do it by ignoring the contrary evidence and having faith. He is hiding so effectively, we must conclude, among other things, that he does not want us to believe. If he wanted us to believe, things would be different in a thousand obvious ways.

So the believer can insist that there really is a God, and that he really wants us to believe in his existence, but he has gone to extraordinary lengths to make that difficult. Then the believer can construct some elaborate justification for thinking that this sort of God exists, but he has complicated reasons for keeping his existence perfectly hidden. And then the believer must engage in elaborate conceptual gymnastics and ad hoc justifications in order to make the whole implausible story consistent with the seemingly Godless world. Or the believer can ask himself this question: isn’t it more reasonable to just acknowledge that the world looks just like there is no God because there is no God?

19 comments:

D'ant
said...

i bet the ant who in some possible world that could think would make the same argument to another ant about human beings. All they could ever see is big feet stepping on them. But the other ant with faith and by faith only knows there are humans that are stepping on them!

This reminds me of a discussion I am having with a Christian epistemologist (link). The basic idea of his concern is whether we can rationally believe on less evidence than, say, the most compelling case. I think the way he set it up like that is rather constructed, but underlying it is that God could come by and show miracles, or make it more obvious, as you point out, that he is behind evolution, say.

The reason I bring this up is because in that discussion I pointed out a critical factor. If we look at facts or evidence which compel us to believe in X, then the facts alone tell us that. The point the author was trying to make was that God need not give us the "whole enchilada" e.g., that he exists, for us to believe that he exists. We can form rational beliefs about such on less evidence. He says, consider this case:

I see my car lock tampered with, it is evidence enough that someone was trying to break in. I need not have a broken window and a stolen radio for me to rationally believe in that.

What seems to be that critical element is that there is intentionality behind the evidence we have. If the car lock is tampered with, that is something that only occurs given the intention of an agent to steal. If the evidence were merely a broken window but nothing stolen we might still think theft, but there is much more "noise" surrounding these facts. It could have been vandalism, an accident, an act of nature (or god!) or theft. We lose the critical intentionality behind the constructed case from this much more noisy one (using noise, here, in the statistical sense that we have information that conflicts with identifying the critical information we want to get out of it).

So to bring this together, if we were to have evidence from God about God and his involvement, then it seems to me we'd need to identify intentionality in the evidence. Precisely, we'd have to be able to discern the intentionality of God himself in the facts of the world! In a sense, we'd have to know "the mind of God" to do that. It seems an impossible feat put that way, and for good reason (i.e., it is impossible!). There is nothing in the objective facts we utilize to explain the nature of reality that lends itself to hint at the intentionality of God's action, if there were such a God to do such action of creation. We'd require a whole other rubric of facts that tell us about God and his actions and how they relate to the facts of the world such that we can infer from them information about God.

To make that last point more clearer given the example above, it is through the facts of the world that we can identify the intentionality of theft behind someone tampering with a lock. It is not a 100% claim, mind you, but it certainly is a highly plausible claim to make. The facts of the world which make that so are involved with also identifying the intentionality of the individual, what theft is, what cars are, how they work, etc. The reason the God case is so problematic appears to be that God is supernatural and supernatural things appear to require supernatural explanations.

I think the level of evidence for which we all accept things may just vary more than we would like it too. I do not see why the notion that god may be hiding is a bad thing. What treasure is there that is precious and yet out in the open for all to find? I actually think god is not hiding but that to grasp him requires a leap in evidence...faith. Why this process of acquiring faith is so troubling to some is really an interesting question. Sure, to accept Santa Claus as real or that the moon is made of green cheese are cases of being credulous. However, when the topic is about a divine being that is purported to be the greatest of all things then I see it as not being credulous to believe without evidence. Such a belief entails that we humans actually designate a being that is greater than the greatest of our notions. Evidence is for claims that reside within our sphere of comprehending i.e. our minds can fully contain propositions and all they entail. But god is the ALL and so we must be satisfied with the portion of understating we are allocated.

Just an interesting idea that I saw being expressed on the Amazon forums about god. A theist suggested to an atheist that god may appear to be hiding because god made the atheist unable to sense god's existence. Think fellow Phil students back to the Cartesian demon and how that entity can manipulate your reality of perception. Why would god do this cried the atheist? To suppress your pride and arrogance replied the theist.

I do not see why the notion that god may be hiding is a bad thing. What treasure is there that is precious and yet out in the open for all to find?

Rather an odd metaphor. The reason people hide treasure is that it is a limited commodity. One person's possession of a treasure entails many other people not possessing it. Do you think that someone else believing in and worshipping your God makes it so that you no longer believe or worship yourself? Is there a limited amount of God to go around?

"I actually think god is not hiding but that to grasp him requires a leap in evidence...faith. Why this process of acquiring faith is so troubling to some is really an interesting question. Sure, to accept Santa Claus as real or that the moon is made of green cheese are cases of being credulous. However, when the topic is about a divine being that is purported to be the greatest of all things then I see it as not being credulous to believe without evidence."

I'm sorry, this is just... absurdly odd to me.

You say it's unreasonable to accept things in which evidence is lacking or contrary. Then, you go on and say it's ok if that being is super-powerful and perfect (as though that being is somehow more plausible rather than less, which is absurd in itself)

There's a really simple reason why people have trouble with faith: It's the abandonment of logic and reasoning.

Faith is the belief of something without, or even in the fact of contrary evidence. By all means this is nothing but irrationality. If you're asking why irrationality is a problem with people, I don't see how it's a question that can be answered outside:

"Think fellow Phil students back to the Cartesian demon and how that entity can manipulate your reality of perception. Why would god do this cried the atheist? To suppress your pride and arrogance replied the theist."

This is just an absurd ad-hominem here. How would hiding suppress someone's arrogant and pride? If anything I'd say believers are the most arrogant and prideful people there are.

I mean, surely I don't see many atheists condemning large swathes of people to eternal damnation while at the same time being utterly convinced that sky-daddy loves me so much I'll live forever in paradise.

And, even ignoring that point, how would hiding his existence somehow suppress pride and arrogance? I don't see how various holy-wars and church-splits due to the conviction that only they are right and everyone else are infidels is a helpful aspect. Would not knowing without a doubt there is a supreme being bring far more harmony to the world?

I can't even being to fathom how you could make the claim that hiding makes people humble.

Bottom line, the troubling thing about the difference between faith and science is that science is committed to checking itself and disproving all of its hypotheses to the best of our abilities so that can sift the mistakes from the truth. But faith and "talking to God everyday" so that he can talk to you has no self-checking mechanism whatsoever. If you allow faith as a route to belief, you open the door for any crazy ideas whatever that pop into your head when you are "talking to God" with no criticism, no doubts, no cross checking, no reality checking, no accountability, and no revision or defeasibility. And that, it should be glaringly obvious, is a really dangerous practice to accept given the preponderance of dangerous, misguided, mistaken, and absurd ideas that our over active imaginations cook up. When we don't hold ourselves and each other to standards of evidence and rational accountability there's nothing to keep us in check. Even you happened to get it right through this bogus method by some stroke of luck, acquiring your beliefs this way is reprehensible, irresponsible, dangerous, and immoral. You put yourself and the rest of us in grave danger.

Speaking of the formation of false a beliefs, a recent study linked the feeling of lacking control with illusory pattern perception to quote the abstract:

Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions.

I think the implications are pretty clear.

The whole abstract is here:http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/322/5898/115

Great Post! I'd like to do a permanent link exchange with you, if you're interested. I run www.createcognitivedissonance.wordpress.com and I think our readers would have a lot to share with eachother. Let me know, via the comment lines on my site.

so you're an atheist martyr. seriously though, what kind of suffering and persecutions do you deal with? do people treat you poorly because you don't believe in God? I'm not an atheist so I don't know how atheists get treated.

I'm mostly kidding about the "suffering like Jesus" crack, Jamie. I liken myself to Jesus as often as I can to irritate the faithful.

About the worst I endure is a lot of personal, insulting abuse from Christians who are wound too tight who stumble on this blog and then vent about how stupid I am and how shocking it is that someone like me is a professor. There are a few folks who make me worry about my safety from time to time. A LOT of people really hate it when there are non-believers around and they make it clear. Polling shows that atheists are the most reviling and mistrusted minority group in America. I guess I'm doing my part to sustain that.

Just an interesting idea that I saw being expressed on the Amazon forums about the Greek gods. A Greek polytheist suggested to a Christian monotheist that the gods may appear to be hiding because they made the Christian monotheist unable to sense their existence. Think fellow Phil students back to the Cartesian demon and how that entity can manipulate your reality of perception. Why would the gods do this,cried the Christian monotheist? To suppress your pride and arrogance,replied the Greek polytheist.

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Atheism

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.